Magic Leap’s Creator Edition AR Headset Announced for 2018

12 months ago

Magic Leap leaves a lot to the imagination. The Florida-based company was founded by Rony Abovitz in 2010, and operated in stealth mode until late 2014, when it raised over $540 million in venture capital from companies including Google, Qualcomm, Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and others. Despite the media attention and notable list of backers, though, the startup remained coy about its technology. But in a surprise announcement on Wednesday, Magic Leap took the wraps off its first consumer product — the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition — and announced a ship year: 2018.

The technology that Magic Leap’s been working on tricks your brain into seeing things that aren’t there. Unlike augmented reality platforms like Microsoft’s Hololens and Google Glass, though, Magic Leap’s goggles beam an artificial light field directly into your eyes. The technology’s culminated in the launch of the Magic Leap One, the ninth generation Magic Leap’s AR hardware.

The company declined to release pricing information, and it’s unclear when in 2018 the Creator Edition will ship. But interested folks can add their name to Magic Leap’s mailing list.

There’s been a surge of interest in AR recently. Google, for example, has invested heavily in ARCore, the successor to its depth-tracking Project Tango technology. Other companies have tinkered with the idea of AR light fields, including NVIDIA back in 2013. But Magic Leap was able to capitalize on media buzz — it’s raised close to $2 billion in funding with a current valuation of $6 billion, and investors include Alibaba, J.P. Morgan, Fidelity Management and Research, T. Rowe Price, Grupo Globo, Temasek, EDBI, and Janus Henderson Investors.